


Death and the Winter Lion (House of Hitsugaya #1)

by Gigai



Series: House of Hitsugaya [1]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:54:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28976976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gigai/pseuds/Gigai
Summary: The House of Hitsugaya series is a collection of chronological short stories from the first person POV of Toushiro Hitsugaya, beginning with his promotion to captain about 19 years before the manga starts.In this story, Toushiro wakes up to the first morning of being captain of the tenth squad and takes some time to reflect on how he got to this point, what his name means to him, and what he's lost along the way. This is mostly inner thoughts since he's just waking up, and it explains how he got his name and family.
Series: House of Hitsugaya [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2125452
Kudos: 6





	Death and the Winter Lion (House of Hitsugaya #1)

The sun jolted me awake, like it usually does.

I don’t like mornings, but I don’t really have any trouble waking up early, either. You can’t sleep if the sun’s shining in your face – according to Grandma – and like most things, she’s right.

I sat up, still a bit groggy and trying to recover from the routine assault on my eyes.

I’d been dreaming again. I was used to dreams by now – dreams about ice, about killing my classmate and friend at Shino Academy, about waking up one morning like this one to discover my captain wasn’t coming back.

This time, I’d dreamed about that cold-blasted day in winter when Grandma had taken me in. I was too young to really remember it, but she’d told me about it so many times I could picture it: those winter days where the cold cracks the ground and sends you shivering indoors, but it doesn’t snow, and the fields stretch out in front of you in the withered yellow stubble of cut wheat and hay. Those stalks punched through the thin straw sandals we wore if you didn’t walk just right, but it was better than going without shoes at all, like the people in the poorer districts did.

A local official had come to Grandma’s door with me, just a swaddled bundle with “pretty blue eyes and a little shock of white hair,” and he’d begged her to foster me. It was common enough in the Rukongai, where souls that weren’t born here as nobles came and went. Families weren’t blood affairs here, they were forged on something stronger. We chose our families, or if we were too young when we died, the shinigami that helped administer the district’s newly dead chose for us.

Neither Grandma nor Hinamori had ever mentioned it, but when I was old enough to put the pieces together I’d realized no one else had wanted me. There was no reason to saddle an elderly woman with another mouth to feed, especially with no man of the house to fix the roof when it leaked, or make sure there was enough food on the table.

Someone else could have taken me. I’m sure they asked.

But even in Junrinan, people were superstitious. No child would have white hair unless they’d been touched by spirits, and ordinary people didn’t want anything to do with spirits. Bad luck, they’d say.

Well, I looked like a chubby bundle of bad luck that day, and so Grandma had ended up with me. She’d already taken in a girl, about five years older than me, and to say Hinamori had been delighted with her new playmate was an understatement. I was her favorite toy until I’d grown enough to start worrying about my sense of dignity and insisted on playing something more a little more manly than pretending to be animals or letting her fiddle with my hair.

Come to think of it, when I was old enough to sneak off and watch the blacksmith, I’d always liked that. I don’t think it was out of any burning desire to make armor, tools, and swords for the town, it was just interesting to watch.

The blacksmith was tall, thick-shouldered and strong, about like you’d expect for someone who swung a hammer all day. He was someone people looked up to and people spoke respectfully to him. For a scrawny kid that was shorter than most my age, it was hard not to wish I was him instead – someone with a commanding presence that people relied on, instead of a snot-nosed brat everyone treated like a stupid kid.

Well, I wasn’t stupid. I knew that much.

Hinamori never found the blacksmith as interesting as I did, but she’d watch with me, sometimes. People were less likely to chase me away if she was around.

People liked talking to Hinamori.

I got up, putting the futon out to air before I realized that I had someone to do that for me now. Captains were supposed to spend their time doing more important things than chores, Captain Shiba had said, but I still wasn’t sure how much of that was true and how much of it was just him trying to get out of work.

He wasn’t here to ask now.

I think I could have stood there all morning, tangled in thoughts I didn’t want that had no place to go.

This was my squad now.

I’d made Captain, and Kusaka hadn’t.

That promise we’d made about being the Vice-Captain to the one whichever one of us made Captain first … it just stung now.

It kept coming back to me, the regret. Every time I moved forward, I felt as though I’d stolen something that belonged to someone else. My zanpakuto. My graduation. My acceptance into the tenth squad. My promotion to a reserve officer position, one of many fifteenth seats. My promotion to eighth seat, then third soon after that.

My bankai, such as it was.

No one had ever achieved bankai so young. I’d just turned 130 or so, but I still looked more like a 8 or a 9 year old than someone who was already 13. There were more than a few researchers in the twelfth squad who’d apparently wanted to examine my abilities, but one of the other captains with white hair like mine had stepped in and put a stop to that.

I didn’t know how to feel about that, either.

It was nice to have someone else stick up for me, but I wasn’t a kid anymore, and I didn’t need some adult trying to treat me like one.

I ended up hanging up all my bedding anyway, like I had every day until now. Futons smelled rank after a while if you didn’t let the sun and air get to them every day. It didn’t feel strange anymore to sleep in the barracks, like it had when I’d first moved here and left Grandma behind, but the room was new.

It had been Captain Shiba’s, and now it was mine, and I still felt a little bit like he’d return at any minute and scold me for taking over his job. I had never been the neatest person when it came to picking up after myself, but now I felt an unnatural pressure to keep everything tidy, like taking up too much of the room would be rude to my old captain. I’d never cared too much about being blunt with him before, but he was gone now like Kusaka was, and like a stupid kid I hadn’t really appreciated either of them until they were dead.

I’d died so young, I didn’t have any memory of my parents, and no one had named children under a year old when I’d been born. Children died easily, and parents would name them once they were older.

Grandma had given me my name. Hinamori had been old enough to remember her family’s name and old enough to have a name of her own when she came here, but I wasn’t, and so Grandma Hitsugaya gave me her name. The man she’d married had passed on from the Soul Society before I’d met him, but she’d kept his name and passed it on to me. It wasn’t a particularly heroic or poetic name – like most family names for commoners, it just had to do with where he and Grandma settled down. There was a place in the mountains up north with seven valleys, and they’d named each one after a day of the week. So there’d been Hitsuga and Getsuga and Suiga and so on, and some of the people that settled there added the character for valley to it and used it as a name.

Hitsugaya.

It might not have been the most impressive sounding name, but I liked it. We weren’t as poor as the beggars that wandered the streets, but we weren’t rich, either, and we didn’t have a lot of things in our house the way some people did. But that name was mine. It belonged to me, and I to it, and I’m proud of it for that reason.

Grandma had named me that day, even though the neighbors told her not to bother; I was marked by spirits and wouldn’t last long enough to need a name. I discovered this not from my Grandma, but from the gossipy neighbor lady across the way that got mad if you called her auntie or spun tops in front of her house.

There were a lot of people all too willing to recount how they’d warned my grandmother against taking me in, once I grew up enough to understand them.

I think that’s when I stopped talking to people so much. It stung, even if I refused to admit it to anyone. I didn’t want to hear what a burden I was to everyone I cared about.

I already knew I was. I didn’t need them to tell me.

I need to work harder, to be more dependable, more responsible. I need to be someone that can take care of my family, no matter what.

I need to prove Grandma wasn’t wrong for taking me in when no one else would.

Being the youngest at everything meant no one took me seriously, no matter how hard I tried or what I accomplished. It was never “that’s amazing” without something like, “for someone so young” following it, and it pissed me off, honestly.

What did age have to do with effort, or talent, or training?

I don’t remember pulling on the shihakusho, or tying the sash. It was habit by now. I could still wear the uniforms I got when I joined, which was irritating.

I still hadn’t grown a centimeter taller.

The white captain’s overcoat came next, and that was new. The haori was sleeveless, because I was pretty sure sleeves were just going to make me look like I was even more of a kid than I already was, like I was playing dress-up in someone else’s clothes.

Actually, that’s kind of what it felt like, honestly.

I fastened my sash over it, the one Grandma had given me, and adjusted the little brass star I’d picked out from the blacksmith shop when I’d become a shinigami.

The blacksmith had given me a grudging look of respect when I’d showed up at his shop in the black uniform of a reaper of souls to pick it out. That was more than anyone else in Junrinan had given me when I left, and I liked him better for that.

I was too short to carry my zanpakuto at my side properly – it really was just a katana’s length, but next to me it looked more like a nodachi, more suited for cutting down cavalry than men. I carried it on my back when I needed it, but there was no reason to take it today. Zanpakuto were for missions, not walking around the Seireitei, so I left Hyorinmaru on his stand and adjusted the sash instead.

I liked that color, so I’d chosen it for the lining of my captain’s jacket as well. I was used to seeing the big “ten” emblazoned on the back, since I’d only ever served under Captain Shiba, but the idea that I was going to wear it now felt weird, proud, and a little uncomfortable all at once.

There was a sudden knock at the door, and I rolled my eyes slightly at the repeated pounding.

Two raps is polite. Don’t ask me why, it just is. More than that always sounds impatient to anyone raised in a normal Japanese household, and so it’s rude. I learned that when I was seven.

Matsumoto, the squad’s Vice-Captain, still seems a bit foggy on the concept.

“What is it?”

“Oh _good_ , you’re awake, Captain!”

Her voice sounded even more energetic than usual, even through the door. “Of course I’m awake. What’s wrong?”

“Oh no, nothing’s wrong, it’s just a big day and I wanted to make sure you were awake! Wouldn’t want you to sleep in today!”

I went over and slid the door open enough to catch sight of my subordinate in a fluffy wrap, hair still tousled like she’d just woken up. She flinched back at the sight of me already dressed.

“Aww, you always wake up first! And it takes me so long to get ready, too!”

I sighed. I’m pretty sure I’d done that a lot when I was her subordinate, and now that she’s mine, I suspected I’d be doing it even more. “You’re worried about _me_ sleeping in? I’m not the one with bedhead right now.”

The words had the expected result; she clamped her hands over her head protectively, as though she could visually purge the sight from my memory, and scuttled back down the hallway to her own quarters. “I’ll be ready soon! Don’t you dare leave without me!”

I sighed again and shut the door.

It had been almost a year since Captain Shiba had vanished. One moment, he was heading off to deal with a situation in Naruki City that had resulted in the murders of two shinigami in our squad, and a few days later we received formal notice that Isshin Shiba’s reiatsu was gone.

If Shiba had no discernable spiritual pressure, then it was safe to conclude his spirit energy was also gone – no soul reaper could generate reiatsu without reiryoku.

Souls couldn’t continue to exist without spirit energy.

That being the case, it was safe to conclude that Isshin Shiba was no longer alive. I remember getting the formal notice from the Head Captain, an old, wrinkled man by the name of Yamamoto. He looked formidable, despite being absolutely ancient by anyone’s standards, and I’d never actually met him before that moment.

I don’t think the Captain of Squad One makes a habit of personally offering condolences for just anyone, but Captain Shiba was a special case. The oldest son of a Shiba branch family, he’d been well-liked by many of his peers and subordinates, and the Shiba clan themselves was one of the Five Great Noble Families. Replacing him would be difficult.

I still wasn’t ready to be a captain, Matsumoto wasn’t really suited for being one either – even the late Captain had agreed with me on that – and so Squad Ten had simply managed without one for a while.

I’m sure if there had been someone, anyone else suitable they’d have appointed them to the position, but there wasn’t, not really. Out of all the souls here, very few have the spiritual power to be able to wield a zanpakuto, and even fewer can effectively use their first release, let alone their second. Bankai is reserved for those with immense amounts of spiritual power, and just using it is a strain on the body. I’d been working on mine before our Captain had vanished, but I still wasn’t anywhere close to mastering it.

I probably wouldn’t be able to truly master bankai until I was older, as much as I hated admitting that. Even for bankai, mine was particularly hard to use effectively without losing control of it, so I was fairly limited in what I could use in a fight. Like it or not, I was eleven years old right now, small for my age, and my body couldn’t withstand bankai for more than twelve minutes. My own zanpakuto had cautioned me against pushing too far beyond my body’s endurance, and we’d worked out a system to tell how much more I could withstand. My hope was that with time and training, I’d be able to handle more, but for now I stuck to my self-imposed limits, trying not to be frustrated about it.

A weapon I couldn’t control would be worse than none at all.

And so I’d spent another year training, trying to find a balance where I could fight like a captain without killing myself in the process before they’d decided I was ready to take on the job of being Captain after all. I’d been handling some of the duties already, since Matsumoto claimed she couldn’t possibly take on “more” work, and today it was official.

I didn’t know how I felt about any of it, to be honest.

I knew I was capable of doing the job. Maybe it was overconfidence, but I really don’t think I would have been given the position if _someone_ hadn’t felt like I could handle it.

At the same time though, I wasn’t like Shiba or Matsumoto, or even Hinamori. I didn’t know how to deal with people, talking to them felt like far too much effort sometimes, and I’d never been what you’d call “charming”.

Knowing I could run the squad wasn’t the same thing as knowing people would like how I did it, or respect the job I was doing. I’d told myself I didn’t care … but I do.

I know I do.

I wanted to be the one to take over this squad. For Kusaka. For Captain Shiba. Maybe even a little bit for me.

I want people to respect this squad.

I don’t want to lose this place where I finally feel like I belong to another captain.

It’s chilly today. I could see my breath hanging in puffs as I opened the sliding door to the courtyard just enough to let in air and sunlight for a moment. The captain’s quarters come with a small courtyard, just big enough for a square of white raked gravel and several bonsai that I’m pretty sure I’m going to murder accidentally in the process of caring for them.

Maybe I can find someone to take care of them for me. I don’t like the idea of ruining them when they take so many years to grow, and I don’t exactly have a knack for keeping plants alive.

I exhaled again, letting the frosty autumn winds carry it away, and shut the door again, really awake now.

Hinamori claims it started snowing that day, when they took me in. I’d grabbed for a snowflake with chubby fingers and unfocused eyes, and Grandma had called me Toushiro. When she wrote it down for me years later, so I could learn to sign my name, the characters were hard to learn.

The easiest one was “winter”.

“Lion” and “son” were harder.

When I’d asked Grandma what it meant, she’d simply smiled.

_“Strength without the power to change things is meaningless, power without the will to protect is cruel, and protecting someone without strength is impossible. A lion possesses strength, power, and the will to protect others, and a winter lion is wise enough to withstand the difficulty and hardship that the cold brings._

_I named you Toushiro because I loved you the moment I saw you, and I want you to become the kind of man who uses their strength and wisdom to help others.”_

It wasn’t something I understood right away. I was young, and the words were big and complicated, and sometimes when one of the neighbor’s kids had been particularly mean to me I would run home, trying to hold back tears, and tell Grandma I didn’t want to help people like those.

She would simply press her lips together into a thin line, the way she did when she was thinking about something unpleasant, then smile and tell me that no matter how badly other people’s grandsons behaved, I was _her_ grandson, and I would be better than that.

And she’d tell me about the winter lions, again and again.

I didn’t want to leave her and come here, not at first. We were so close, the three of us, and I know she was lonely when Hinamori left to attend Shino Academy. I was angry when she went. It was childish, and more than a little selfish, but I didn’t like seeing her leave us behind so easily. I didn’t like seeing her come home on breaks and talk endlessly about people that weren’t Granny and I, or the captains she admired that I’d never heard of, or the goals that had nothing to do with coming back here after she graduated.

I decided I wouldn’t leave, no matter what. Even when I started to wonder what Shino Academy was like, even when I eyed the shinigami I’d see in town and wonder what it was like to be one, I kept refusing to acknowledge it.

Even Grandma could see I wanted to go, eventually. I felt so ashamed when I finally asked her if I could leave, only to realize she’d known all along.

Children grow up, even when they try desperately not to.

I knelt on the tatami mats and eyed my reflection in the tiny mirror I’d set on my writing desk.

My face still looked younger than I wanted it to. My eyes were still that piercing shade of turquoise that no one seemed to like except my family, and my white hair was too fluffy and soft looking. I didn’t look particularly intimidating, even with the white jacket of a captain, and I felt disappointed that nothing much seemed to have changed overnight.

It was silly to expect it, but I had sort of been hoping getting the job would make me look more like someone who was supposed to be a captain.

I had to be introduced to the captain’s hall today, my first formal meeting as the captain of this squad, and I didn’t exactly know what to expect.

Honestly, I was mostly just grateful my voice wasn’t likely to crack or break. Having a deeper voice on the way might have been nice, but at least I wasn’t going to be embarrassed by it suddenly changing mid-sentence as I introduced myself.

I hesitated, then took the lid off the small jar I’d asked Hinamori to buy for me a few days ago. I didn’t know much about stuff people put in their hair to make it look a certain way, and I didn’t really care to start, but I’d told her I wanted to spike it back a little, get it out of my face. It was too childish and flyaway, and not nearly tough enough looking to suit me, and admitting it to her was only slightly less embarrassing than just going somewhere and trying to buy it myself.

I ended up using a bit more than I needed, and eyed the result with dismay. It wasn’t fluffy anymore, but it was sticking up in spikes and I wasn’t sure I liked the result. I didn’t have time to wash it out though, so I tried fiddling with it a bit more until it wasn’t quite so … crunchy. One lock of it kept flopping down over my left eye no matter what I tried, so I gave up, glaring at the mirror’s image.

It wasn’t what I was used to, but it didn’t look as silly as I’d been worried it might have, and I looked a little older.

Maybe.

…probably not.

“Captain?”

“Yeah, coming Matsumoto.” I rinsed my hands in the bowl of water that I’d filled from a pitcher the night before, dried them, resisted the urge to check the mirror again, and stood.

Rangiku Matsumoto wasn’t someone who waited for social niceties most of the time, but today she actually waited for me to open the door again instead of barging in.

“Are you ready?” I asked, but she ignored me and planted her hands on her hips, surveying me for a moment. She was dressed about the same as usual, with some chain around her neck she never took off and enough visible cleavage it was a wonder she didn’t pop out of her shihakusho by accident, but she’d traded her usual neck scarf for a longer one in the same eye-searing shade of pink that she’d draped over her shoulders.

I briefly debated whether ordering her to cover up a bit more would have any chance of success, decided I didn’t particularly care enough to argue about it, and sighed. “What?”

“Very nice, very nice. I’ve done a good job,” she said, with an amount of pride that was inversely proportionate to how much she’d actually done this morning.

“Wasn’t aware you did anything,” I said dryly, and she pinched my cheek and pulled, like I was a troublesome younger sibling.

“Don’t be disrespectful to a lady!”

I gave her a look and reached up to pinch her cheek and pull, and for a moment it felt like it used to, and maybe Captain Shiba would come back after all and I wouldn’t have to go meet a bunch of people I didn’t want to meet very much.

Then we both let go, and Matsumoto sighed. “You’re a good kid, and you’ll make a good captain, okay? Don’t be nervous.”

I didn’t like being so easily seen through. “Who said I was nervous?”

“ _You_ didn’t say anything,” she retorted. “Nice hair.”

I didn’t want to ask, but I only managed to last until we’d left the barracks and turned onto the road that led towards the barracks that Squad One used. “…does it look stupid?”

“No, it looks fine, really. It’s just a big difference from before,” Matsumoto said soothingly.

That relaxed me a little. I apparently cared way more about what people thought of me than I had previously wanted to admit to anyone.

“It was so cute and fluffy before though!”

That was a blow to my already fragile dignity I really couldn’t stand for. “It wasn’t _cute_.”

“It was absolutely adorable.”

“Aw, shut up,” I retorted irritably. I was used to her poking and teasing and trying my patience, but I wasn’t in the mood this morning.

She sniffed a bit, pretending to pout, but she did at least stop poking holes in my confidence for a few moments, and I took the chance to take a few slow breaths of the sharply cold air that was starting to warm a bit as the sun rose.

I’m the Captain of Squad Ten.

I’m Toushiro Hitsugaya.

I’m wearing the sash my Grandma gave me, and I’m not sure what the next hour might bring, or the one after that, but I’ll be fine.

I’m the winter lion’s son, and I won’t flinch from a few cold stares.

“Come on, Matsumoto. We’re going to be late if we don’t walk faster.”

“We’re going to be early if we do.”

“…give me a break, would you?”

**Author's Note:**

> Bleach and all related characters belong to Tite Kubo.  
> If you liked this story and want more (and faster), buy me a soul candy here: https://ko-fi.com/gigai
> 
> Reference Notes:
> 
> Bleach Databook Souls, pg. 133; Momo and Toushiro are described as having a "familial" relationship.
> 
> Bleach Tankobon 32, chapter -16; Momo wakes up Toushiro and tells him to hurry up and eat breakfast or she'll be late, then mentions popping next door to say goodbye to friends. It's similar to how Yuzu frequently tells Ichigo to get up so they can eat - in a "traditional" Japanese family (your mileage may vary if you're an actual Japanese kid and not an idealistically portrayed shounen hero), you eat breakfast together, so siblings will wake each other up or risk missing breakfast/being late to school.
> 
> Bleach Tankobon 16, chapter 131; Toushiro in the Viz translation says "Momo", but in Japanese he uses "Hinamori", and I went with that because it's easier to portray the notion of -kun, -chan, or no suffix at all to portray closeness without bogging it down to read. It also seems like the sort of thing he'd do to seem a bit older than he is.
> 
> Bleach Tankobon 32, chapter -16; It's implied (from Toushiro's perspective) that people are afraid of him due to his appearance or personality, and aside from a few random exceptions like Mashiro, Yachiru, etc. hair colors are largely normal in the series, and particularly in the Rukon district where people don't have access to crazy hair dye. There are several works that discuss characters in this time period being persecuted for having eye colors that aren't the typical brown or black, and a commonly held belief in Edo Japan was that (particularly in samurai families) your character was related to your hair. So if you didn't have "straight" hair, your character was probably crooked too. (Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto's book "A Daughter of the Samurai" is pretty fascinating reading, if you're into history like me.) Based on this, it's pretty safe to assume a kid with unnaturally white hair and oddly blue-green eyes was going to be treated like some kind of curse.
> 
> -Bleach The Diamonddust Rebellion Drama CD, track 13; Toushiro and Kusaka have a discussion about becoming captains right before their graduation (though their duel happens first, sadly). Toushiro doesn't really want to be a captain, but doesn't intend to stay an underling, either, but Kusaka has wanted to be a captain ever since a winter's day ten years ago when he saw the Ouin processional with a Captain taking charge of it. He insists that if he becomes a captain first, Toushiro has to be his Vice-Captain, and vice versa, and while Toushiro initially doesn't really care, he changes his mind and promises anyway.
> 
> -"Genpuku" and naming children; there are many sources for this historically. Depending on the era or regional customs, some children were not named until they were at least a year old - since children often died easily at a young age, some were not named formally until up to 3 years of age (though this doesn't mean they didn't use nicknames!). Genpuku was a coming of age ceremony that signified a transition to adulthood, and when it occurred depended largely on the state of the country at the time: if there was war, the age of adulthood was generally older, and if there was peace, the age was usually younger (partly due to the pressure to marry and have heirs). During the late Edo/early Meiji era when Toushiro would have been born, the age of becoming an adult was typically 13-15 years of age. Unlike the historical customs, Toushiro wouldn't have been sent into battle this young!
> 
> Personal Notes:
> 
> -I am going to avoid as much gratuitous Japanese as possible. If it's standard use in the series, like gigai, reiatsu, and so on, I'll use it and try to make it clear in context what it is. I will be using names the way people use them in the Japanese manga (i.e. Hinamori, not Momo) but avoiding suffixes and other bits that can make it clunky for readers who understand less Japanese. Don't get me wrong - I love Japanese, speak it fluently, and lived there for awhile, but throwing constant Japanese phrases in that could just as easily be in English and convey the same meaning makes it inaccessible to some readers, and I won't do that.
> 
> -As much as is humanly possible, I'm drawing on canon content and some non-canon when it suits the story. Please note that I'm NOT gatekeeping on what's canon or shipping or any of that, this is just what I'm doing for this series. My goal is to write a story that feels very much like it could be Bleach from Toushiro's perspective, instead of Ichigo's.
> 
> Since this is the first story, this is really the only personal notes section I'm going to bog you down with, because let's be real, no one reads these things anyway.


End file.
